Sanctification
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
Romans 7:15, 20-21, 24-25 NIVUK
Be forewarned: I’m not delving deeply into the theological concept of sin and sanctification, and I’m not going to attempt to tell anyone how to gain salvation – the Bible does that well enough without my input. In this article, I am very simply going to reflect on the contrasting states we hold as Christians, of being simultaneously saint and sinner.
When I became a Christian, in April 2016, I thought that I had been healed of everything that had been wrong with me before. It didn’t take very long before I was forced to confront my error.
I remember one Good Friday, before the pandemic, when my church hosted a viewing of the crucifixion scene from a show or film followed by quiet reflection at several Passion-themed prayer stations. I had just recently read the passage from Romans 7 which I have condensed into five verses above; it had upset me deeply, since I saw myself in it. The things which I wanted to be doing – good things that showed the love of Messiah and helped to usher in the Kingdom of God – just didn’t come naturally to me, and I had been silently punishing myself for it, believing myself to be a ‘bad Christian’ – as if such a thing exists. I remember sobbing on my minister’s shoulder while she told me kindly that the discouragement I was experiencing was from the enemy.
I have been pondering on this passage again over the last few weeks. The things we want to do, we just can’t seem to manage. The things we regret or condemn, the things we run from or try to conceal – those things just seem to cling on, or hide well enough that we think they’re gone… for a while.
Why? I ask God sometimes – He’s big enough and kind enough to take my anger and confusion with His usual gentle grace. Why do we always fall short? Why can’t we even meet our own standards? Being holy, according to our Christian calling, seems impossible. It’s utterly out of reach.
In short, I have been reflecting on just how necessary God’s grace is.
I have recently started reading the thirteen sermons John Wesley wrote on the Sermon on the Mount, translated into Modern English by James D. Holway. In the first of these sermons, Wesley writes at length about the first beatitude: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ He delves into what ‘poor in spirit’ means, about spiritual poverty and humility, the recognition of our spiritual destitution. This is hard to read – especially for someone who comes from a non-religious family where ‘sin’ is a trigger word sparking heating disagreements. For me, the concept of sin was revolutionary in my life – I had known all my life that there was something wrong, and I finally had not only a name for it, but a solution, too: faith in Messiah Jesus!
When I set out to write this article, I meant it to be very short – a setup, really. It was meant to be a few short paragraphs to give context for a poem I wrote. It seems I’m not very good at being anything other than longwinded – which needn’t be a criticism.
Sometimes, it’s so easy to be swamped by that sense of helplessness – to look down at my hands and think, ‘What am I trying to achieve? I can’t do anything.’ But we aren’t meant to do something, exactly. We aren’t saviours – we don’t need to save ourselves. From this place of mixed grief and celebration, I wrote this poem, called Sanctification.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines sanctification as ‘the action or process of being freed from sin or purified’.
Sanctification
My body, Lord, is a bouncy ball; it craves the hit, it loves the fall,
It longs to throw me under tires.
My body is a circus trick; it craves the jump, it loves the kick,
It longs to cast me into fires.
My gut, it hates my body, Lord,
For all the damage caused when bored,
For closing ears and eyes and lips,
And scalding all my fingertips.
My body, Lord, is a jack-in-the-box; it waits until temptation knocks,
It eats the poison I had sworn to leave.
My body is an impulse wild, it loves the killer, strikes the child,
It digs up graves that I had hoped to grieve.
My heart, it hates my body, Lord,
For all the sick gold in its hoard,
For twisting ankles, truth, and dreams,
And tearing me at all my seams.
You close my mouth when I would hiss, Your hand in turn I curse and kiss,
Your arms embrace me, though I scratch them raw.
You hold me, Lord, when I am fitting, clasp my wrists when I am hitting;
The holy chains that keep me, I adore.
Madeleine
If you want to contact Madeleine please email hkms.mwib@gmail.com
